


There Are Things You Can't Fight

by SunsetOfDoom



Category: Book of Life (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen, Warning for Small Children Being Pursued By Kaiju
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2705777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunsetOfDoom/pseuds/SunsetOfDoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 2019, a year before Gipsy Danger meets her demise; but a beach vacation is still not a safe place to be when the Kaiju alarms go off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are Things You Can't Fight

"This is the worst vacation ever." Manolo groused. He plucked down heartedly at his guitar, kicking the dirt with scuffed shoes. "Beaches are dumb, there's nothing to do."

María flipped her wooden sword end-over-end, using the point to poke his nose. "Nun-uh."

"Yeah-huh!" Joaquín argued, not nearly as downcast as his friend. He lunged for Marìa, sword in hand, roaring in imitation of Hardship, who he had saved up scrounged change and allowance money to buy an action figure of.

María parried it away, darting to his left. "Nah-uh!"

"Yeah-huh!"

The swords clashed again as Joaquín let out another roar, and María squealed in mock fright, dashing for the mouth of the alleyway. She leapt to a safe distance, dropping into a Jaeger's combat stance.

"Target sighted!" She reported into an imaginary comms system. Joaquín stowed his sword in his belt loop, crouching and letting out a fierce Kaiju growl.

"Target identified as category two, code name Hardship," Manolo intoned into his cupped hands, "Blue, you're clear to engage!"

At his word, Joaquín and María lunged for each other, grappling, growling, and making machinery-whirring noises for effect; within moments they were wrestling in the gritty sand, laughing and rolling.

"Ow!"

"Sorry Manolo!"

"That wasn't you, that was Joaquìn!" He whined, whacking his friend with his sandal. 

"Nuh-uh!" Joaquín retaliated with his sword, making for Manolo's head, who got past his guard and shoved him backwards.

"Yeah- _huh_!"

Manolo danced around him to turn a clumsy back-handspring, overbalancing his landing and falling on his backside in the dusty mouth of the alleyway. He looked shocked for a moment; his friends froze, wondering if he'd hurt himself.

He laughed. Relieved, María nabbed his guitar, ran to him, and pulled him to his feet. 

"Come on!" She giggled as Joaquín resumed his Kaiju act, stumbling towards them. "Come, on, we need to retreat!"

This close to the beachfront were mostly shanty towns, abandoned as the infectious, phosphorescent Kaiju Blue spread its tendrils up and down the coastline. The kids raced, roared, fought, and played their way out of sight of their rented beach house.

 

They came to rest, finally, in a park; green hills, trees, and benches, one of which they flopped down on, leaving two swords and a guitar in the dust underneath.

"Should we be out this far?" Joaquín wondered, around a yawn.

"Prob'ly not." María shrugged. "Let's figure it out later."

"I think I remember how we got here," Manolo volunteered, "so we should be able to get back."

"Later." María sighed, flopping over on Joaquìn's shoulder. 

"Later." The boys agreed.

 

When they awoke, it was closer to sunset than midday, the light falling slant wise through the trees, the clouds gathering around the sun to be dyed a shining pink. Everything looked beautiful; perfect and still. They sat, dozing, watching the sunset. The worst-vacation complaints were nowhere to be found.

All was right with the world until sirens wailed from the coastline.

The three bolted upright. Every child was taught exactly what to do in case of a Kaiju alarm; they had Kaiju drills once a month at school. They went to the basement, took roll call, sat whispering to each other while teachers ticked off checklists.

Reality was different. There was no teacher, no classroom; no easy safe zones. They were under the open sky.

"We- we have to go back, _now_." Manolo picked up his guitar, casting about for the way they'd come. This alley, that alley- they all looked the same. The park that had just seemed quiet and peaceful now felt paralyzingly open.  
The ground shook. 

From the city, they could hear shouting- screaming really. Car alarms, breaking glass. 

"That's really close." Joaquín's voice shook, and he stowed the stick-on mustache in his pants pocket, so it wouldn't get lost. "Can we even get back? Before it... "

He went quiet, unwilling to mention the possibility of it coming their way.

María clutched the tiny gold cross that always hung around her neck. She prayed, a wordless hope that nothing would harm them. "We should find a way to get underground. That's what they tell you to do, right? Get underground so it can't-"

Miles away, from the heart of the city, came a monstrous and ancient roar, loud enough to seep into their bones; as one, the children screamed.

Joaquín grabbed both his friends by the hand, and started them off from what he thought was the direction they'd come; a line of buildings, fancy suburban houses emptied by the flight from the coasts.

Another bellow shook the buildings, and they began to run. 

The houses were all different shades of brown, painted pristinely, with enormous yards in front and back, fences separating the property lines; foreign to children from San Angel, with houses crammed together around open streets with few cars. The land dipped a little to the north, and the city, only a mile or so away, was easy to see, the same skyline they had been staring at for a week.

"One of these has got to have a shelter basement," María panted, sprinting for a door. "if we can just get in-"

It was locked.

María said a word that none of them were supposed to know; Manolo flinched by instinct, looking around as though his father would come out from the shadows to scold her.

"They're all gonna be locked." She kicked the door. "They're up for sale, none of them are gonna be un-"

There was a distant crash, and through the gap between the houses they could see in the silhouette of the city that the tallest building had come down. And where it had been, as tall or taller, they could see the shadowy form of a monster.

All three of them stared, caught by looking at something impossibly alien; at this distance it was like being at the zoo, staring for the first time at a creature that was wholly unlike the ones of their world. It looked almost comical, like a crocodile on its hind legs, or a child's crayon scrawl of a dinosaur.

And it turned towards them.

The mouth- beak- its _head_ , opened in their direction. It howled again, which echoed and bounced across the suburb. It stepped, and they could feel the crash of it pulsing beneath their feet. And it was getting closer.

For years, Manolo had had Kaiju nightmares just like this, after watching footage of Scissure on the evening news. And after every one his father would tell him-

"They only go after big cities," he said. María came back to the middle of the street, taking his hand, and Joaquìn's. He clutched his guitar in his other, trying to reassure himself with the familiar tension of its strings. "This- isn't a very big city."

"The biggest city nearby-" María realized aloud. She turned to look behind them, squinting against the setting sun. The largest city nearby was Mazatlán, a few miles to the south.

They were between the Kaiju and its destination.

Fighter jets streamed in overhead like fish in a river, so fast that they were no longer overhead when the noise of their passing became audible.

 _A week ago that was the tallest building I'd ever seen,_ Manolo thought, distantly, _and the monster knocked it down like it was a block tower. Am I dreaming? I hope Papa will wake me up..._

María tugged on their linked hands, trying to break the terrified spell that had come over them like a rat sitting before a snake. Manolo turned to her, and she squeezed his hand tight, before letting go as she turned to run.

The only way to go was back. Towards the city was pointless, even suicidal; in the run-down beach houses, they might find some kind of unguarded basement. 

But more than towards shelter, they ran away from the monster. Running in a loose group through the middle of the street, the Kaiju's steps echoed behind them, seeming louder and closer every moment- it covered quarter-miles faster than they could go a city block.

Joaquín grasped at Manolo's shoulder, steering him towards the buildings. "Stay out of the open!" He darted a glance at the sky, the screaming jets not loud enough to cover the noise of the screeching Kaiju.

Manolo nodded, wiping his tears away with one hand, clutching his guitar with the other.

From the end of the block, María - the fastest - cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled. "This way! This _way_! I found something!"

Joaquín held out his hand without looking, and Manolo held on tight, focusing only on the study rhythms of his feet on the ground.

"A graveyard?!" Joaquín shouted, unable to hear himself over the fight, now only a half-mile away.

María pointed to the tall wrought-iron gate, and the half-dead grass of the cemetery beyond.

Most of the graves were markers, not even holding a body; Kaiju attacks didn't leave many remains. But further into the graveyard there were old-fashioned headstones, with altars and carved names of entire families. 

And behind even those were the crypts.

The beast behind them was panting, growls rattling the locked metal gates; close enough to smell of ammonia and ocean water. With shaking hands, Joaquín hooked his fingers together, offering them to María as a foothold. They locked eyes, hazel and green. 

From the first day they met, she knew that Joaquín was brave; it was the first thing she'd noticed about him on the playground. This was the first time she realized she loved him for it. Grief and fear and love balled together in her chest, and she bit her lip, not letting herself cry.

"Go on," he said.

With one glance back at Manolo, holding his guitar before him like a knight with a shield, she put her foot in Joaquín's hands, and jumped for the fence.

She clung to the bar with both arms, using her momentum to get her leg over before gravity took control. Hanging balanced, with a Kaiju behind her and nowhere to go but over, she took a breath- and tipped to the other side.

After a moment of freefall, her right shoulder took her weight, and it rolled too far backwards with a feeling like nails on a chalkboard, like twisting her ankle, her bones protesting with sick agony. Pain slid through her arm, up her neck. She knew something was broken, the _crack_ of it echoing through her bones, and cried out. It was more pain than she'd ever been in, and for a white-out moment, all she wanted was her father.

She lowered her head to the hard-packed dirt as the ringing replay of the break faded from her ears, the battle behind her taking its place.

The explosions, roaring, and screeching were only going to get closer. She panted for breath, clenching her jaw hard to keep the pain from stopping her, and struggled to her feet.

"I'll f-" her shoulder twinged and she gasped, biting her lip until stars burst in front of her eyes, until her stomach stopped doing somersaults."I'll find someplace safe!" 

Both boys were calling her name, but she couldn't help them by staying. They needed shelter, and they would only get it if she found it- soon.

 

Manolo slid his guitar carefully between the bars of the gate; even half-hysterical, with tears sliding down his face and the very real threat of death behind him, he wouldn't ever let it be damaged. It was the last present his mother had ever given him.

"Ready, brother?" Joaquín asked, looking behind him at the smoke clouds and chaos. Manolo grimaced; his friend was so dramatic.

"We are both going in there, you know." His voice wobbled, cracking under the strain of emotion.

Joaquín smiled at him the same way he did the smaller kids in the foster home, condescending and reassuring.

Manolo hit him in the arm, and the grown-up smile gave way to childish anger; it only lasted a second, but it was enough. "I'm not leaving without you. Give me a boost."

His foot fit neatly in his friend's hands; they'd snuck into Marìa's room like this, hundreds of times.

He grabbed hold of the crossbar with one hand, and hooked one ankle around it too; it took some maneuvering, but he got one knee rested on the bar, twining one arm around the vertical pikes that threatened to stab him, and the other hanging down for Joaquín to take hold.

But the older boy was just barely out of reach. Their fingers brushed over and over, but their grips didn't hold.

From behind the came a rasping, guttural breath, the overpowering stench of cleaning chemicals, and an infuriated, baying howl from the Kaiju. Joaquín yelped, grasped one vertical bar in each hand, and shimmied upwards; inch by inch, as they listened to the planes crash or explode only blocks behind them, the smell of fire and jet fuel mixing with the ammonia. Only a few feet off the ground, Joaquín clamped his left elbow around the bar, and reached up.

They grabbed onto each other's wrists the way they did climbing trees, or in their secret handshake, and with the help of Joaquìn's worn-out rubber soles catching hold on the ancient metal, they toppled over the gate.

Manolo took the fall gracefully, tumbling over on his back; Joaquín less so, rolling over his shoulders the way he would have down a grassy hill. 

A plane crashed only a few hundred yards behind them; the smoke, heat, and sound of screeching metal was too easy to hear. Both boys jumped to their feet; before he could consider doing anything else, Manolo lunged for the guitar, and they sprinted, the ground shaking as the beast fought its assailants, back towards the crypts.

 

“Marìa!” Joaquín shouted as loud as he could; the closer they got to the back fence of the cemetery, the more worrying it became that they hadn’t seen her. Manolo tapped him, and pulled his shirt up to his nose, trying to block out the smoke that was rapidly infesting the air; Joaquín did the same, and tried not to cough.

_“Marìa!”_

“Over here!” Her voice rasped, but it was close; he ducked around a few altars, and the large, locked stone buildings that were the crypts. 

At the very back corner of the cemetery, their saving grace, was a crypt with a cracked, sagging doorframe, blocked only by a piece of brittle plywood. And at the bottom of the stone steps was Marìa, covering her face with her long skirt, coughing around the thickening smoke.

“We have to break in.” Joaquín checked over Marìa, and saw her shallow breaths and tearing eyes. “Marìa?”

She shook her head. “You have to do it- my shoulder-” Her chest shuddered as though she were about to cry, and she held her breath, hiding her face.

Manolo set his guitar next to her, holding onto her hand for only a moment before he drew back with Joaquìn. Together, they sprinted as fast as they could- up the steps, into the door. They rammed into it with as much strength as they had- and bounced back, tripping down the steps.

It was cracked.

The planes were falling almost inside the graveyard, and the noise almost became too much to bear as the Kaiju screeched and roared.

In a panic, Joaquín kicked the crack down the middle; it widened, but did not split. He ran at it again, from the bottom of the steps, and beat at it with his fists.

Strange how only minutes ago, he’d have faced down the Kaiju alone for a tiny chance for his friends to be safe; and here he was, petrified, unable to even break a piece of wood; he slammed his palms against it as hard as he could, and realized, too late to stop, that he was crying. 

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and Manolo was there, his stick-up hair a mess of ashes and dirt, and - he was crying, too. 

_“One more.”_ He saw his friend’s lips move, and even though he couldn’t hear him, he knew. 

They ran back, and towards the door one last time. And together, they broke through, falling flat into a dusty marble floor. 

Once inside, the crashing, screaming chaos felt distant. Like they were in another world; the walls windowless and cold, urns carved with names lining the walls, resting places for generations of one family. 

For the first time in an hour, Joaquín let himself breathe. 

Manolo, on his right, dashed back outside as Joaquín pried himself up off the floor, feeling like he was trying to scrape burned eggs off the bottom of a pan. He got to his wobbly legs, and put his hand out for the wall; the tiny room wasn’t much, but there was a wooden trapdoor; if he could get it open, they would be underground. Safe. 

He took hold of the metal ring, heaving with all his might. It rose an inch or two, and he struggled to keep it there. 

“Manolo!” He yelled. “Marìa! Come help!”

They skittered back in like spiders, quick and frightened, hugging the walls. Marìa, smart as ever, spotted their problem first, and she limped to his side, wedging one shoe into the gap. With some of its weight taken, he could hold it a little better, but he could feel his palms slipping. Manolo took the edge in both his hands, and with him pushing, Joaquín pulled up, and up- and over. 

The thick wood slammed to the floor, rusted bits of broken hinges flying across the room. In the darkness were concrete stairs, and all together, they jumped for the first step.

Joaquín felt the crack first, trying to shout a warning, but it was too late; the stone, crumbling from years of disuse, couldn’t handle the weight of three children. The corner of the first step slipped, crashed, and together they tumbled over the empty space where a handrail wasn’t.

For a moment, they were falling into complete darkness, like a half-awake dream, but it wasn’t far. Shorter even than the drop from the gate. Joaquín took the impact on his hip and his wrist, and from the coughing sounds he heard from Manolo, the other boy had belly-flopped. 

“Marìa?” He called. “How’s your shoulder?”

“I’m okay.” He jumped; she was right beside him. “And you don’t need to shout.”

He cast about in the darkness; the light from the crypt above, strained as it was, enough to see Marìa’s outline, and he took her hand. 

Above, the Kaiju’s footsteps were still echoing; in fact, they reverberated through the walls around them better than they did the air. Its screams, and the explosions and gunfire of the planes, were muffled.

Joaquín breathed deep, his lungs aching and his heart beating hard. He pulled gently on Marìa’s hand, scooting backwards until his back was to the wall. She leaned her body to her right side for a second, almost to rest her head on his shoulder, but drew back with a gasp and a whimper, and he heard the back of her head hit the concrete. 

“I’m okay.” She managed to say, her voice cracking.

On his right, Joaquín heard a cough, and the rasping sound of a small body with a small guitar being dragged through the dust and broken concrete. Manolo came to rest by his side, head on his shoulder. There was a sniff, and he felt hot tears soaking into his ripped shirt. 

He found Manolo’s hand too, squeezing tight, and then let go to wrap an arm behind him. 

Another roar shook the walls; a heavy impact, and explosion, made it clear where another plane had landed. Joaquín swallowed hard, pulling his knees to his chest. His father had died in one of those planes- in Cabo San Lucas, running interference to keep civilians safe. He wondered if the dying pilots above them had families to care for, children that would be abandoned. 

Marìa's hand tightened around his, and he rested his head atop Manolo's, and, with nothing more he could do for them, he let his tears fall.

He tried to hold onto everything he felt and heard, in case they were his last; the terrified drumming of his heartbeat, the pain of his bruises and scrapes; his and Manolo's hiccuped sobs, Marìa's whispered praying.

There came a resounding low-brass note, echoing for miles.

For a few seconds, everything stilled; the guns, the planes, the Kaiju, even the children's breathing.

The horn sounded again, like an angel's trumpet.

"Matador Fury." María breathed. "They're here- we're _safe_ -" She whined, low in her throat, and took her hand from his to wipe her tears away.

Joaquín would say that the most satisfying sound he had ever heard was that heavy, military-tread _bang_ of a Jaeger’s steps. Rhythmic and comforting, the noise of its easy march could reassure anyone that nothing could happen to them while it stood guard.

Again sounded the horn, as a challenge and boast; _come and meet me_. In response, the Kaiju bayed in echo of the horn's low, crooning sound, and tapered off to a thundering growl.

Steps, picking up pace- one, two, three quick, ground-shaking beats, and there was a sound of impact, of metal meeting flesh. 

A screech from the Kaiju.

The crashing above them moved off as, slowly but steadily, the Kaiju was driven back towards the beach, and every blow was a godsend; dust clattered off of the walls, and the three friends listened, enraptured, by every howl of pain.

The fight continued above them for what felt like hours, and they clung to each other as the last things they had in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be continued. I swear.
> 
> Really, there will be a second part to this, detailing how they get back to their parents, which I will write and post after the December rush of "I have to write six things at once as Christmas presents AAAAAAAAH". 
> 
> After that, there might be... some kind of continuation. Eventually. Including Matador Fury II with three arms, Marshall Catrina LaMort, Xibalba the deeply grumpy engineer who needs more coffee, a deeply upsetting foretelling by Newt Geiszler, and Maria geeking out over her hero, Mako Mori.
> 
> EDIT: Accents were going the wrong way (damn you, French class). I tried to fix them all; but if you catch one that I left, let me know.


End file.
